


Fear and Loathing in Thra: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the urSkek Dream

by bam_cassiopeia



Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Dark Comedy, Don't copy to another site, Dumbass Alert, Gen, Humor, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 13:50:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21282764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bam_cassiopeia/pseuds/bam_cassiopeia
Summary: SkekGra and urGoh’s most excellent adventures in the trines following the Great Division.(alternatively –skekGra the Conqueror is a drug-addled Skeksis. He is sent to conquer the land of Thra for the Skeksis Empire, but then the situation escalates into him and his psychotic counterpart searching for the dream of reunion, aided by almost every drug known to Skeksis and uRu.)
Relationships: skekGra & urGoh (Dark Crystal)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 67





	Fear and Loathing in Thra: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the urSkek Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Voyages_divers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voyages_divers/gifts).

The first time he crossed paths with urGoh after the Great Division, skekGra was in a good mood: the conquest of the Dousan Clan was going well, if not particularly speedily, and kept him both busy and moving. The little buggers were tenaciously opposed to joining the rest of the Gelfling in the Skeksis’ fold, which he could appreciate where most of his brethren couldn’t: after all, there was little fun to be had in conquering if the conquered just rolled over submissively. That was boring – and of all the numerous things skekGra despised, boring was at the top of the list.

The Dousan also did the most amazing things with urdrupe berries, something he hadn’t even known until his first taste, which was probably criminal under any decent legal system. Such things shouldn’t have been kept from him, especially since as far as drugs went, the berries were better than the Endless Woods’ mushrooms, better than the rare Nurloc saliva, better than dried purple moss – and purple moss had been skekGrak’s favourite for trines and trines.

The berries and the resulting high were probably why he hadn’t fled his counterpart as soon as he’d appeared; he’d thought he was hallucinating urGoh and by the time he realized the uRu was extremely solid, they’d shared enough urdrupe wine to poison a full Dousan village, children and livestock included. By then, the dozen of brightly coloured singing Nurlocs took most of his attention and urGoh’s; the operetta the beasts were performing, a nonsensical story about a people divided by hate, was strangely absorbing, and his counterpart seemed to agree, humming along. He sounded better than the Nurlocs did, even if he was too hopelessly slow to keep up with the tune.

On the morrow, whatever followed the hallucinated show was hazy in skekGra’s memory, but he was quite certain the spectacle had ended with the Nurlocs pairing off to do something indecent before exploding into piles of shining goo. The goo hadn’t been real, that he remembered, and braiding had been involved somehow, which was reason enough to never speak of that meeting to another living soul. Conquerors were allowed a few eccentricities, but braiding? That was pushing it a bit far.

Best keep it a secret, he decided; secrets were, after all, a lot of fun to keep.

+++

There were no urdrupe berries on hand to blame for the second meeting.

There were, however, mushrooms, and the fact that conquerors did not flee. Of that skekGra was certain; Conquerors stood their ground, even if their split half was slower than geological processes and more patient than erosion and probably only willing to spend any time with skekGra at all for the sake of some scheme against him. There was also the fact that catching Armaligs for the Castle’s stables did not involve much rampaging and rather a lot of running, and the whole task did not square very well with skekGra’s idea of a fun time, which meant he was somewhat desperate for distraction, and some conversation with someone who was not one of his Gelfling underlings. Nor the supposedly helpful Hunter, who was too busy pretending he didn’t understand the difference between killing and catching to realize skekGra would gladly lock him in a cage with a handful of Armaligs and no weapons and watch the ensuing spectacle, or maybe just didn’t care.

UrGoh at least only got on skekGra’s nerve, rather than making him homicidally stupid. For an uRu, he wasn’t too holier-than-thou, although that was not something skekGra was inclined to dwell on: if his counterpart was weird for an uRu, then maybe _he_ was weird for a Skeksis, and if it was the drugs, he was taking them too, and if it was a little bit of both – since skekGra did not believe in simple, single causes – it still brought to the same place, which was weirdness unbecoming of a Skeksis.

He probably should have at least tried to think about it, but it was a lot more fun to have urGoh show him how to build puppets to re-enact their latest vision of dancing Fizzgig. Puppets were not something he’d had many occasions to play with, since urGoh insisted the few times skekGra had waved around corpses skewered on his sword didn’t count, even if he’d made the voices to go with it. There hadn’t been much art to it, that much was true; puppetry, on the other hand, _was_ an art, and urGoh had been clever enough to frame it as one he’d conquered before skekGra and couldn’t be beaten at. He did have two pairs of hands to animate the puppets where skekGra only had one, but the unfairness only made the challenge more exciting.

Even the other Skeksis seemed to enjoy his new hobby: if the clapping was to be trusted, they found his rendition of the classic tale of the war against the Arathims more than agreeable. Sadly, only three of the puppets he’d painstakingly made for his representation came out of it mostly whole and unsinged, and the Collector made off with most of the pieces that flew off and refused to admit it. As to the painted background, it burned a little _too_ well.

+++

The sixth time, it was again the Dousan skekGra was fighting – they had a bit of a knack for rebellion, those, alas unshared by the other Gelfling Clans. It was, skekGra supposed, the way they saw death not as something to fear but as an old friend to welcome, an invisible companion that dwelled all around them in the sun and the sky and the sand, that made them fearless, worthy adversaries rising again and again to bite the hand that took. SkekGra liked them despite himself, and if even among friends _re_conquering wasn’t quite as fun as actual conquering, the urdrupe berries more than made up for it. It was still better than being stuck in the castle, twiddling his claws; how anyone could bear it he didn’t know.

“You again?” he asked when urGoh walked up to him, only a smidge of annoyance in his tone. He’d stopped being surprised by his counterpart’s knack for appearing at what were either the best or worst times for him to do so, and instead of resenting these apparitions the way he ought to, skekGra found himself anticipating them.

The uRu shrugged in that geologically slow way of his, and that was that. He’d brought dried purple moss and crimson poppy tea, which was nice of him, although by the time he was done taking them out of his leather bag, skekGra had started growing grey feathers. Still, the moss gave wings to his thoughts, and if the poppy only made UrGoh more lethargic, the urdrupe berries gave them the same colourful visions.

This time, it was tiny flying Firelings, half of them electric blue and the other a bright pink, moving in complex steps. Separation, reunion, the story they were telling felt familiar; like it wasn’t just a hallucination, but something else, something more, and if skekGra just thought about it –

+++

It was quite the amount of trines and semi-fortuitous meetings before the afternoon when skekGra rose suddenly, feathers puffing, pointing to the giant flowers belting their song about unity in podling tongue, squawking and cursing. His eyes might have popped a bit.

“This,” he screeched, indignant, “this is a _life lesson_! _Unity_! This is about _us_!” He turned to urGoh, accusing claw now pointed to him. The uRu had barely started reacting. “You – you knew,” skekGra sputtered. “_You knew_! But I will not be taught! For I am Skeksis! I am _unteachable_!”

“… I… knew… yes,” urGoh said, head bobbing up and down sluggishly, like a glacier extending and receding. “… It was… obvious… But… didn’t you… learn?”

“Curse you,” he swore, and his counterpart nodded again, still unhurried. In the span of twenty seconds, skekGra decided he hated urGoh, that hating half of himself was useless, and that clearly, he was much too sober to deal with any of this. He reached for the wine – urGoh could clog his lungs all he wanted, skekGra preferred his urdrupe in liquid form. Another insurmountable difference in a long list of insurmountable differences. “You can go now,” he told the giant flowers after a deep swig, but they kept on screaming, somewhat triumphantly now. It was hard to say; flowers weren’t very expressive, and podling wasn’t the most subtle of languages. He screeched loudly, because this was all very frustrating, and flailed, because the screeching didn’t do enough to express the depths of his frustration and only took him to new heights of frustrated-ness.

“… Now… will you… braid my hair?” urGoh asked once that was done, as if skekGra wasn’t having both a personal crisis and a meltdown rolled into one. And curse _him_ but skekGra sat down and did just that. He was high as a kite and his counterpart’s hair was softer than it looked, and only he knew how nice it felt to braid it, and rolling on the ground in frustrated despair lost its luster quickly.

“You won’t have hair if we reunite,” he said. It didn’t feel like a very good argument against reunion, but it was the one he had. “You won’t even _be_. Neither will I.” The notion was a dreadful one; not being was the least fun thing skekGra could envision – he’d spent most of his flesh-life resolutely _avoiding_ non-fun things like not being.

“… But we will… be us,” his counterpart said, and coming from him, it didn’t sound half bad. UrGoh, skekGra was coming to realize, absolutely was the bad influence in this relationself, which had to be both unnatural and unfair, and maybe a little bit ironic.

He screeched once again, because he was not having a good time, and he wasn’t built to handle that.

+++

They made their way to the Circle of the Suns in the Dousan’s desert, where the best urdrupe grew, fed to rich sugary sweetness by the sun, and stayed right there for more than a unum, consuming great quantities of the excellent urdrupe and purple moss and mushrooms and poppy and even, on one momentous occasion, some Nurloc saliva brought to them by a Sifan trader with more curiosity than sense. Many a vision ensued, all of them seemingly nonsensical hallucinations with terrible production values and most clearly aimed at the colour-blind.

Still, after that unum skekGra could do nothing but admit all those visions shared the same muddled message, although he made a point to put as much ill-will as he managed in the admission. It wasn’t a small amount; he’d had trines and trines to perfect the attitude. There was much cursing as well, which urGoh withered with the patience of a mountain so stoned it thinks itself the sea.

“Alright,” skekGra told his counterpart after a final show featuring grander-than-life, garishly coloured poor approximations at Skeksis and uRu doing things no decent spectacle should ever offer without content warnings. “You win. Not because of the visions – the visions are terrible. Utter nonsense. I don’t know what’s up with all that mashing and grinding, and I don’t see what it has to do with unity. And what’s that about a Fizzgig taking all the credit? Like you and I aren’t going to do all the work!”

“...I don’t –“

“You don’t think it’s a Fizzgig, it’s a Gelfling, yes, yes, of course it’s a Glefling, precious and close to Thra and all that nonsense, who cares? That’s not the point. The point, the point is, the visions are of no consequence. Unity –” He stopped at that, refusing to say any more. If he could blush, he would have.

UrGoh nodded, only slow as the sea rising inexorably. “…Then you… have better reasons… than… because… Thra told you… so.”

For an instant, SkekGra floundered, before defaulting to shrieking indignation. “How do you always know _exactly_ what to say? It’s insufferable! Unbearable! Unendurable!”

UrGoh’s only reply was the sound of water gurgling in his hookah, followed by a sluggish chuckle.

“I hate you,” skekGra grumbled. “Truly I do.”

“…Liar,” urGoh said, with a smile like liquid light chasing the horizon on a languid winter morning.

+++

It turned out that neither uRu nor Skeksis were ready to be sold on urGoh and skekGra’s grand unity project. The uRus at least only refused, pretexting it wasn’t their time yet, but the Skeksis drove a stake in skekGra’s cranium and glued it there, which he felt had to be bad form somehow. With all the conquering he’d done for them, it seemed a bit ungrateful that they went to the stake after only two dozen puppetry shows on the theme of unity.

“Ouch,” he said, once urGoh was done with the slowest rescue Thra had probably seen in all of its history. A rescue so slow generations of Podlings were born and died between the time it began and the time it ended; a rescue so slow it was almost insulting, although to whom skekGra wasn’t quite sure. He poked at the stake in his head.

“…Yes,” urGoh said with a sad attempt at swatting skekGra’s claw away from the injury and a sigh that took the time a sapling took to grow to a full tree. “…I can… feel it.”

Someone who wasn’t a Skeksis would probably have felt guilt at that, but skekGra had tried guilt and found it exceedingly lacking in fun and awfully boring after the first ten minutes or so. His experience with shame had been even shorter, but no more pleasant. “Does it tickle?” he asked. “I feel it tickles. Tingles? Tingles, yes, that’s it.” He giggled. “Tingles!”

Beside him, urGoh sighed again. It took as long as it’d taken Thra to grow mountains, which was a lot of time. Enough for skekGra to close his eyes and let the sound lull him to sleep.

+++

The fourth unum after that ridiculous rescue, skekGra decided to turn mad. There was a stake in his head. Madness only made sense and to cinch the deal, he’d always lived up to his title, and that title now happened to be the Heretic, which he thought called for a bit of madness, a generous amount of sheer lunacy, and quite a bit more public eccentricity than he’d ever allowed himself.

As a bonus, it made urGoh’s snail-paced shuffling somewhat bearable in the long term. The Conqueror was impatient, and cut through whatever bored him; the Heretic was no less impatient, but he dealt with it by shrieking and flapping about and sometimes beseechingly raising his claws to the empty sky. Of the two, one clearly was more equipped to live in a semblance of harmony with his split self for many a trine.

UrGoh saw little difference, which skekGra found deeply offensive – if only because he was trying really, really hard, and trying really, really hard sucked the fun out madness, which made him the loser in all this, and he most definitely deserved some compassion to make up for it at the very least.

+++

They went to Aughra’s orrery first – in retrospect they maybe should have done so before trying to convince anyone else on the whole matter of unity, but in more retrospect it wouldn’t actually have changed anything, because Aughra was sleeping an unnaturally deep sleep, leaving her in no state to dispense Thra’s wisdom.

SkekGra tried shaking her, screaming at her, and then slapping her – at which point her Podling servant charged him, slashing at his ankles with a butter knife. It was much more effective a weapon than it should have been, and SkekGra had to lock the little menace in a closet for everyone’s safety.

UrGoh managed to get some wine in Aughra’s throat, but that didn’t have any effect either. They tried singing and dancing and fed her enough purple moss to wake the dead, and then they tried singing and dancing again because if not on Aughra, the purple moss certainly worked on them. They tried tickling her, and pinching her nose, and screaming really close to her ears, and they even put her hand in a bowl of water, but she slept through it all, unmoved. SkekGra would have tried more extreme methods, but roasting the living incarnation of Thra’s feet seemed exactly like the kind of things he wasn’t supposed to do anymore, so he didn’t even offer, and instead went through her belongings while urGoh tried to mystic her awake.

That didn’t work either, although she did stop snoring long enough to shift a bit on her cot, but after that the snoring resumed, even louder. In the end they left no wiser than they came, although skekGra had found a crystal shard in an ornate box that resonated in the precise way the darkened Crystal of Truth did, so they did leave with more than they’d had when they’d arrived.

And then they had to turn back to let the Podling out of his closet, because urdrupe was excellent for visions but it didn’t do a lot of good to short-term memory.

The Podling wasn’t very thankful, and SkekGra’s ankles’ bore the brunt of his ungratefully aggressive reaction at being freed from his closet. Still, the little menace was likable – especially once they’d left him and the orrery for the second time.

“…He… bit you,” UrGoh objected.

“Yes!” SkekGra crowed. “Exactly! He bit a _Skeksis_!” He cackled at that, thinking of the face any of his brethren would make if a Podling came at them with a butter knife and the intent to maim.

“…Oooh,” UrGoh said, and he laughed, like the slowest avalanche to ever grace Thra. Along with SkekGra’s cackling, it made a sound almost like music.

+++

Of the uRu, urGoh was the slowest; for all that it was never-ending, his wandering was a snail-paced, meandering thing, often interrupted for wonder and contemplation. Of the Skeksis, SkekGra was the most restless; he tore through the land of Thra, conquering and pillaging, resenting every interruption, every setback.

One of them was good and the other evil.

It was a bit simplistic of course, and when the urdrupe made him even more talkative than usual, SkekGra would call UrGoh a conqueror and a heretic among the uRu and himself a wanderer among the Skeksis, and his counterpart would blink, slow like a crevasse closing and opening again, eyes taking on the glaze that meant he was deep in thought. SkekGra would warm up to his theme, skewer the uRus’ complacency, laud the Skeksis’ curiosity, curse the limitations of each, and then UrGoh would blink again.

“…We are –“

“Yes! We’re more together, two as one – not two, but one reunited, complete, finite, unsundered!”

That was usually when UrGoh had to make skekGra to pat him on the back for a bit, huge hands carefully tender.

+++

If urGoh was _the_ Wanderer, he wasn’t the only uRu that wandered; the Archer, whose counterpart was madder than even skekGra, walked the length and width of Thra as well. He wasn’t quite sold on the thought of getting close to his counterpart, urVa, but then no one would want to be close to skekMal, so it was hard to fault him for that. And if his distaste for urdrupe and mushrooms and poppies and all things fun was sadly obvious, he always did his best not to radiate disapproval for urGoh’s lifestyle choices, which was enough to make him skekGra’s second favourite uRu.

SkekMal too was a wanderer, if only for the sake of the hunt, and so it stood to reason his path also had to cross theirs occasionally. Unlike urVa, he never attempted support, offering only contempt – which had nothing to do with either skekGra or urGoh personally. It was only that skekMal had nothing else to offer anyone; the one thing that made him bearable was that he was never the last to partake in urdrupe, and although it didn’t give him any vision, it mellowed him somewhat.

Still, even at his most mellow, skekMal mostly talked of his hunts, which had lost its luster long before skekGra had even been rebranded the Heretic; there was only so much one could bear to hear of the stalking and the jumping and the stalking and the killing and the stalking and the sweet, sweet taste of blood. Even when one was a Skeksis.

It was him that suggested they seek for Raunip, Aughra’s wayward son who’d witnessed more trines than any but his mother. Probably they shouldn’t have listened, considering how dubious a source skekMal was, but listen they did, setting out in search of ancient rumours.

The way took skekGra and urGoh through completely new varieties of mushrooms, a tea brewed from the ground bark of a luminescent tree, and a disgusting concoction made out of molluscs’ secretions that made them forget the very reason behind their trip, at which point they turned back, bickering all the way back to the Circle of the Suns and its supply of urdrupe, which was more home than any other place on Thra.

The Dousan hadn’t been particularly welcoming initially, which was understandable; skekGra had, after all, left quite the trail of death and destruction when he’d first cut through their land, and then again and again and a few times more to make the conquering stick, and most Gelfling feared the uRu on principle, if only because they’d been taught to fear what they didn’t know. But the Dousan had made no attempt at driving out their neighbours and only shunned the Circle of the Suns where they believed death dwelled. If nothing else, it meant there was no need for locks to keep thieves away, even when skekGra and urGoh were absent for trine after trine.

It was only once back to their home and its clutter that they would remember the whole point of the aborted trip and decide skekMal’s suggestion had been a joke at their expanse. Raunip had never once been helpful as far as skekGra knew, and doubtless he wasn’t about to start for their sake.

+++

They didn’t have help, but they had themselves, and their imagination, and a steady supply of urdrupe for when that failed. At first, inspired by a vision of a shining sword they tried weaponizing the crystal shard, creating a glaive out of it, but once that high was over they realized a weapon killed people, which wasn’t exactly what they were aiming for, but more importantly, a weapon needed a wielder. Preferably a Gelfling with average-sized hands, which ended up being a bit of a problem; not because average-sized hands were rare among Gelfling, but because most if not all them were quite content under the Skeksis’ boot, and as such not particularly receptive to urGoh’s message of peaceful civil resistance nor skekGra’s message of all-out rebellion.

The fault didn’t lie with the message or even its delivery; it worked fine on the Podlings, although inspiring them was a terrible idea – not because they were predisposed against all things rebellious, but because nothing was less manageable than an excited gaggle of Podlings, and because for every one that showed some promise as a revolutionary there were two dozen who were dangers to themselves, every other Podling, and probably every other creature living on Thra for good measure.

The Gelfling, though – the sight of a Skeksis turned them obsequious; the sight of an uRu turned them scared and aggressive; the sight of both together, preaching for the overthrow of their masters had a variety of effects, but none that made for fun times, and none that ever ended up in any kind of overthrowing, although skekGra and urGoh certainly did get thrown out of a number of villages, thrice from the top of a cliff, and once from the back of a Crystal Swimmer.

After that, they tried delivering their message through interpretative dancing and singing, and they tried theatre even if it wasn’t all that easy with only the two of them and no volunteers, and they tried puppetry, but it all always ended the same way – with a lot of angry Gelfling.

“…They will… come to it… on their own,” urGoh said when they were down to despair and spicy peanuts. “…Just like… you did.”

There went skekGra’s counterpart, being _reasonable_. It would ruffle anyone’s feathers. “But why do they have to be so _slow_? It’ll take them forever to learn what exploitation even means at this rate!”

“…You were… slow too.”

“I wasn’t the exploited part. I was _doing_ the exploiting!” skekGra objected. “And I was very good at it.”

+++

Still, the Dual Glaive would someday be of use, of that they were certain, and so seemed the visions. Even if Gelfling were nowhere ready to start rising up, it was easy enough to create a tapestry of stories about a mythical weapon waiting for a hero deep in the Endless woods, a weapon whose power would unite the Gelfling Clans, a weapon that shone so bright it would banish evil from the world, a weapon that would strike down a great danger – stories upon stories, so that when the glaive was found none would be surprised. SkekGra and urGoh had trines and trines to do it, and even if Thra wasn’t very good at communicating, it could be trusted to nudge events. The glaive would find its way in the good pair of hands and would do its work, even if that work probably, hopefully, didn't actually involve shining anyone to death. Urdrupre-induced visions did tend to be highly metaphorical, after all.

That left them with nothing but time and urdrupe on their hands, but it wasn’t too hard to find better ideas than weapons. Hints to scatter here and there, waiting; just enough information to nudge curious, clever Gelfling – and because neither curiosity nor cleverness had ever kept anyone from being skewered, their masterpiece: Lore, who would protect those curious, clever Gelfling until their path took them to sksekGra and urGoh and the knowledge they would need.

With Lore, they could have built their own army; giant stone creatures that would step on the Castle of the Crystal, reduce it to rubble in only minutes, end the reign of the Skeksis in little more than a day. But if they did that, no one would _learn_ anything and worse, there would be no occasion to finally – finally! – find a willing audience for the _True History of Thra_ puppetry show, which even urGoh agreed was not a very fun prospect.

So they didn’t build an army; skekGra instead took up interior decorating to pass the time, and urGoh started growing urdrupe berries _in_ their home, which was how they came to their next idea – riddles, which were a lot more fun than plain old messages.

SkekGra hoped the Gelfling would agree, whenever they finally decided to get on with the program.

**Author's Note:**

> For Myrrha, enabler extraordinaire, partner in crime, beautiful human. ilu.  
Look, there’s certainly room for sad angsty backstory for my faves, but I trust the fandom to write those, so I went the other way. I blame that “inspired by Fear & Loathing” quote. CLEARLY. I say clearly but since I was too lazy to either reopen the book or rewatch the movie, the actual Fear & Loathing references stop at the title and the summary. Shame on me and all that jazz.  
The only non film/TV cameo is Raunip because the Creation comic is the only one I read, and it’s not much of a cameo.  
No betaing because again: lazy.  
Also idk what’s up with those orthographic conventions for the names but seriously, _why_.  
I wrote this listening to The Glitch Mode on repeat for some unknowable reason??


End file.
